Category Archives: So-Hee Woo

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For our final project, So-Hee and I decided to create a collection of gifs that depict little snippets of technological scenarios that highlight certain fears we have with technology. While all the gifs capture some genuine fear we have with technology, some of the gifs appear to be more comically fantastically than others. We thought humor would be an interesting component in making these technological fears approachable and relatable but also instill an erie undertone of concern as well. We chose to encompass our gifs in a social media campaign called Creepy Technoloy that people can follow and spread online.

Our aim is to remind people that we sometimes forget to think about the implications that technology has. What does it mean that Facebook has our faceprint? What does it mean that uber is working on creating autonomous vehicles to replace drivers? As our Facebook “About” section states: “There are daunting facts about technology that creep up on us. These gif serve as reminders that we are not always aware of what kinds of things surround us. Are these fears rooted in legitimacy….or are they falsified fictions?” We hope that Creepy Technology will uproot the discussion that tends to be overlooked with technology.

The following are the social media platforms we have used to house our campaign Creepy Technology:

Context: Superstitions of the past are based on historical and religious fears that are no longer taken seriously today. And yet, some still engage in these little acts that aimlessly support these fears (i.e. some avoid walking under a ladder, some blow away fallen eyelashes for good luck etc.) It is almost comical that these little acts were once rooted in serious matters.

Goal: Our goal is to manifest fears that we currently have today into a collection of gifs to be presented to an audience of the future in a comical/mocking fashion. We wanted to focus on technological fears (i.e. mistrust of AI, privacy and security concerns online, technological implications of healthy human-to-human relationships, etc). While these are genuine concerns that people have today, in the future they may seem silly and naive.

Deliverable: We would like to manifest our design fiction work into the form of an interactive website of gifs that depict “futurerstitions” into a flashcard format. These cards will also be printable to serve as a keepsake. The aesthetic style of these dynamic gifs will verge of cartoonish and cute-sy to embody how a future generation might view our contemporary fears as comical and naive. (reference:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw)

I really liked the concept of the Emerge exhibition but also wonder what it truly meant for the people that participated in the exhibition. Designing the future is a terrifying thing that weighs heavy with the responsibility of “potential”. But what is interesting is people aren’t afraid of worrying about the little things that change even though it might make a huge difference in the way we behave and interact with the environment we create and that naturally surrounds us. When provided with the task of designing something for the future in a exhibition environment I can only assume people had a great time making coffee cups that would never spill or socks that only accounted for 4 toes. But after that burst of fun creativity is over and people head home back to their current lives, what does that potential future of the mundane become? Are we still inclined to design a bunch of crap, just future crap, to fill our future houses and our future trash eating robots? I think it’s a great way to get involved and start thinking about design the future, but also wonder if it design fictions seem like a game more than an important component and understanding the future of design.

With more and more mixed race and same gender couples finding their way into the the public the underground Eugenics Cult, XXY is vastly growing, finding the best set of genetics while maintaing “pure bred” status. Although technology is booming and the ability to preserve genetic material is more easily accessible to the general public, XXY places upmost importance in hiding from the public eye. As a way to keep their members loyal and organized within the system, each member is asked to bundle string and soak it with their own blood in order to keep a log of their members’ and their DNA for future cloning potential. The ritualistic behavior not only binds the groups goals in preserving a purebred illness free society but also helps create a manual log of their members. This behavior signified, not only, loyalty to the cult, but contribution to a “better” society pushing the boundaries of the term “blood brothers”.

Especially with these readings I felt extremely inspired by the nuances of storytelling. With Design Fiction, there is a lot of speculation between design fiction and science fiction, but what’s most interesting to me is how the cross section between the two result in a method of communicating practical academic planning through compelling language and art. When trying to articulate an idea, a great way to get others to understand what you’re pitching is by framing it as a story so an impersonal scenario becomes easy to relate to. But in this case we’re asking people to open up their minds to accept their understanding of fictional storytelling and imagination as the potential truth. It’s presenting shocking, scary, or mundane future possibilities in a way that can easily be misinterpreted as art, or simply speculation. But how does design fiction’s relationship with story telling result in a more open mind, especially with the general public? How can design fiction introduce the childish imaginative quality of “fiction” into a way of thinking in a plethora of disciplines? Will people’s ability to combine “pretend” with “real life” to create the perfect balance of daring speculation and practical analytics?

I feel like the way design fiction is discussed makes it seem very separate from other aspects of design. We have people from a bunch of different disciplines come together to achieve the greater goal of speculating the future and creating future scenarios, but all this writing seems to neglect where design fiction falls as a contributor to collaboration. In the writing “Power of 8” there was a section that refers to all the different disciplines contributing to the experiment and the first person listed was a designer(futurist) which I found extremely curious. Why do we call futurist designers, if they’re futurists? Or are we asking all designers to be futurists (meaning futurists is not it’s own expertise but an skills requirement for designers to have)? If furturist becomes it’s own discipline, how will that affect the work dynamic of design-minded collaborative teams now? What will that extra spot at the table mean for other experts, and how does that clash with human-factors experts? It’d be interesting to see how different companies would change if each team was asked to have a futurist making contributions throughout the design process. Would projects become more long-term?

Side Note* I think it’s funny that the “future prompts” are printed in pixely-boxy computer font. If we were in the future and computers were fancy-human-like they might as well have their own unique handwriting.

In 2030 after the boom of social media, people have difficulty forming romantic relationships without the aid of an online date-match system. Due to the lack of human-like emotional simulations these computer algorithms are not comprehensive resulting in a skyrocketing number of failed marriages. Many people have become independent or feel a lack of emotional satisfaction. Online dating systems lead to higher expectations and decreases the patience required to work through unexpected problems. The concept of a relationship lasting over 10 years is extremely rare, and is more of an idea of the past. This has affected United States birth rates, leaving the country in panic about the aging population. This has also resulted in an increasing number of orphans and single parents. The words marriage-license have lost a lot of its weight and religious undertones. Pop culture has labeled those that choose to keep long term marriages ” U-A’s” or in other words Union Addicts. This has created a lot of different types of groups and societies that practice this idea of Union Addiction. It’s now more common for pre-teens to be interested in trying little and frequent relationships with pre teens from other schools through different match-making outlets.

Hooman a social sciences multi-billion dollar research company is one of the few successful companies that conduct and release research on improving human relationships. Their most recent project, Hooman-Love collects and analyzes journals written by couples that follow their very detailed ” How to Love Like a Hooman” method book. The book asks you to record how each individual feels throughout each stage of the relationship on a daily basis, distinguishing what aspects of the relationships can be left to algorithms and what is less predictable. The on-going research has gotten an extreme amount of press due to its potential in re-kindling long-lasting relationships and improving people to people algorithms. It asks for complete strangers to get to know each other with the expectations that individuals have when they find themselves in a relationship. Hooman has taken pain-staking efforts to see how much of a relationship is reliant on interpersonal chemistry and how much is reliant on just textbook psychology. This research is in preparation for the launch of an organization named ” Toomans”. Toomans is a business that teaches and matches people together to be in a relationship to raise a child to the age of 18, a time where those two individuals can choose to continue their family or part ways from there. This business provides people with the experience of having a family without having the pressure of keeping an “old-timey” family relationship. It allows for polyamorous freedom while still having the ability to continue long-lasting relationships if they choose to. Although there is some controversy about this method, Hooman has taken extra measures to study social science in order to create the perfect system to engage men and women of 2030 in maintaining a family while still learning and keeping the obligations and expectations of a relationship.